ABSTRACT

One of the main reasons that brought Jung to separate from Freud was Freud’s belief that infantile experience is paramount and profoundly influences the person that each of us becomes. Jung felt this approach was deterministic and, convinced that there must be more, he plunged into the scholarly study of people's written heritage: philosophy, physics, and metaphysics, anthropology, astrology, and mythology. According to Fordham, abandonment is a traumatic experience and differs from other forms of separation in which sadness, pining, and grief are experienced. In abandonment, there is no internalised image of a mother who can physically hold and mentally contain her infant, because the actual mother has left her infant without her mediating and containing function. The patient “lost” her mother when she was a few months old. While her mother was ill, she was brought up by another member of the family, who looked after her in a rigid and strict way.